I've made my first novel, Ventus, available as a free download, as well as excerpts from two of the Virga books. I am looking forward to putting up a number of short stories in the near future.

Complete novel: Ventus

To celebrate the August, 2007 publication of Queen of Candesce, I decided to re-release my first novel as an eBook. You can download it from this page. Ventus was first published by Tor Books in 2000, and and you can still buy it; to everyone who would just like to sample my work, I hope you enjoy this version.

I've released this book under a Creative Commons license, which
means you can read it and distribute it freely, but not make derivative
works or sell it.

Book Excerpts: Sun of Suns and Pirate Sun

I've made large tracts of these two Virga books available. If you want to find out what the Virga universe is all about, you can check it out here:

Major Foresight Project: Crisis in Zefra

In spring 2005, the Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts of National Defense Canada (that is to say, the army) hired me to write a dramatized future military scenario. The book-length work, Crisis in Zefra, was set in a mythical African city-state, about 20 years in the future, and concerned a group of Canadian peacekeepers who are trying to ready the city for its first democratic vote while fighting an insurgency. The project ran to 27,000 words and was published by the army as a bound paperback book.

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From worldbuilding to worldwatching

It's amazing to be alive during the initial discovery of extrasolar planets. Too bad we're all so distracted

It's almost time to name Gliese 581d.

Two billion years or so before our own solar system coalesced, this planet was formed around a dim red star that's now about 20 light years from Earth. Gliese 581 d is therefore an ancient world, orbiting around a cold star. But it may be habitable.

That's the conclusion of the latest study, by R. D. Wordsworth, F. Forget1, F. Selsis, J.-B. Madeleine, E. Millour, and V. Eymet (the paper is Is Gliese 581d habitable? Some constraints from radiative-convective climate modeling; you can find it on archiv.org). They ran simulations based on what we know about the planet and its star, and conclude that if d has a sufficiently thick atmosphere of CO2, it could have liquid water at its surface. Other studies of so-called "super-earths" like d hint that many or most of them will be water planets, global oceans. And, when you factor in a recent study of habitable zones that indicates they could be much broader than first assumed, it seems that if this world has any sort of an atmosphere at all, then it's likely habitable. So, here's what we know about d:

It's between 7 and 13 times the mass of the Earth, but its radius is unknown (however, likely around 1.15 times Earth's radius). If it's as dense as the Earth, then its surface gravity is about 2 times Earth's; but Earth is the densest of the solar system's rocky planets. If d is an ocean world, it's likely a lot less dense and its surface gravity may be the same as Earth's. In that case, though, it is almost certainly an ocean world, with no accessible land at all.

It's may be tidally locked to its star, meaning that the sun stays fixed in one spot in the sky, and one whole hemisphere is in permanent darkness. This is a condition usually taken to mean that the planet in question would be lifeless because the atmosphere would all condense on the cold side; but numerous studies have now shown that tidally-locked planets can retain their atmospheres quite well. They do, however, tend to be windy.

It may well have a thick CO2 atmosphere (researchers suspect these are common) in which case, provided minerals are able to leach up from the depths of the planetary ocean, it may have been capable of hosting life for six billion years now.

There's a really good chance that d could support life--though you and I wouldn't want to live there, since we'd weigh twice what we do on Earth and the atmosphere would be toxic. But it could still be a lush world, overflowing with life.

What does it look like on this world? The sunlight of its permanent day isn't red, though we call Gliese 581 a "red dwarf." To us, it would appear to have about the same spectrum as a 60 watt bulb, which is to say, yellowish-white; and daylight is a bit dimmer than it is on Mars, so with the naked eye, it's visually like wearing a good pair of sunglasses. The human eye adapts to a wide range of light conditions, so you wouldn't really notice the difference. But, if d has an atmosphere, the sky is blue. Old as it is, d may no longer have active plate tectonics, so, like Mars, it probably doesn't have mountains or volcanoes. But it won't be a cratered environment, either, if the atmosphere is thick enough for water to be stable. --And speaking of water, the weathering effects of high wind and water over billions of years suggest that it's become a very flat world lately, with either a global ocean, many shallow seas and low islands, or vast dry plains.

But this is amazing--because we're talking about a real planet here, not some speculative possible world; and not some science-fictional dream. d does exist; we'll soon know whether it really is habitable, and within a few years, may be able to detect signatures of actual life in its atmosphere. Already, we've learned enough to know that there are billions of other planets sailing through the galaxy with ours. If we learn that Gliese 581 d really could sustain life, we'll be able to begin estimating (roughly, at first) how many habitable planets the Milky Way contains. Considering how close Gliese 581 is to us, that number could be huge.

So what do we name this new world? It is ancient, far older than our own worlds; so it would be fitting to name it after one of the Titans, who are older than the Greco-Roman gods we've named our planets after. If it's a sterile ocean, I vote for Oceanus; if it could host life, then my favoured name would be that of Oceanus's wife, the goddess of rivers and lakes: Tethys.

Welcome, Tethys, and may you divide history into two parts: the long age in which we wondered whether we were alone in the universe--and a new epoch in which we know we are not.

And yet, this preprint: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1006/1006.2503v1.pdf suggests something different again. d would indeed have locked its rotation to its star after 1 billion years (so, 7 billion years ago). However, that doesn't mean it rotates synchronously. Indeed, the above article suggests that d rotates once every 33 days, while its year is 66 days.

d could also have active plate tectonics, if there's a combination of residual internal heat and tidal effects (as becomes more likely if the planet's rotation rate is different from its orbital rate). And, finally, all of this plays into the question of whether d has an internal dynamo and hence a magnetic field--because without this field, its atmosphere would have been stripped away 7 billion years ago.

Therefore, an uninhabitable d looks like this:
--Tidally locked, with one face turned permanently to the sun
--No magnetic field, hence no atmosphere
--No plate tectonics
while a habitable d has these characteristics:
--Resonant orbit but not a one-face
--Slightly oblique rotation, preventing 'cold traps' at the poles
--Plate tectonics driven by internal heat and tidal heat
--Magnetic field

I'm a member of the Association of Professional Futurists with my own consultancy, and am also currently Chair of the Canadian node of the Millennium Project, a private/public foresight consultancy active in 50 nations. As well, I am an award-winning author with ten published novels translated into as many languages. I write, give talks, and conduct workshops on numerous topics related to the future, including:

I use Science Fiction to communicate the results of actual futures studies. Some of my recent research relates to how we'll govern ourselves in the future. I've worked with a few clients on this and published some results.

Here are two examples--and you can read the first for free:

The Canadian army commissioned me to write Crisis in Urlia, a fictionalized study of the future of military command-and-control. You can download a PDF of the book here:

Crisis in Urlia

For the "optimistic Science Fiction" anthology Hieroglyph, I wrote "Degrees of Freedom," set in Haida Gwaii. "Degrees of Freedom" is about an attempt to develop new governing systems by Canadian First Nations people.

I'm continuing to research this exciting area and would be happy to share my findings.

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Coming on June 18, 2019

"Science fiction at its best."

--Kim Stanley Robinson

A Young Adult Scifi Saga

"Lean and hugely engaging ... and highly recommended."

--Open Letters Monthly, an Arts and Literature Review

Sheer Fun: The Virga Series

(Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce are combined in Cities of the Air)

“An adventure-filled tale of sword
fights and naval battles... the real fun of this coming-of-age tale includes a
pirate treasure hunt and grand scale naval invasions set in the cold, far
reaches of space. ” —Kirkus Reviews (listed in top 10 SF novels for 2006)

"With Queen of Candesce, [Schroeder] has achieved a clockwork balance of deftly paced adventure and humour, set against an intriguing and unique vision of humanity's far future.--The Globe and Mail

"[Pirate Sun] is fun in the same league as the best SF ever has had to offer, fully as exciting and full of cool science as work from the golden age of SF, but with characterization and plot layering equal to the scrutiny of critical appraisers."--SFRevu.com

"...A rollicking good read... fun, bookish, and full of insane air battles"--io9.com

"A grand flying-pirate-ship-chases-and-escapes-and-meetings-with-monsters adventure, and it ends not with a debate or a seminar but with a gigantic zero-gee battle around Candesce, a climactic unmasking and showdown, just desserts, and other satisfying stuff."--Locus